To quote Rob Fleming from High Fidelity: ''...No one worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain and misery. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable, or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?''
Yes, boy bands have been manufactured since the 80s, yes, Take That was also manufactured, and yes, maybe even the break-up was engineered by the record execs just to boost the sagging record sales! But, damn it, I LIKE TAKE THAT. I like them in spite of the fact that even the cover of this album is sooo cheesy, it was obviously meant to appeal to the boy-band-crazy girls of the early-90s, I mean, look at them, all in white and cuddling like they were stuffed bears!
Everything Changes goes on my top 100 list of the 90s. Why? It's not just because of the songs, which were well-engineered and well-sung. It is not only because of the videos which were also well-crafted and featured really good-looking people. It could be because pop is not an easy niche to stay in. Oh yeah, it is VERY VERY easy to get your execs and market research people to target your audience - as Bart Simpson says in the Homerpalooza episode, ''Making teenagers depressed is like shooting fish in a barrel''. But, once the glory has faded, you will be forgotten and cast aside. Very few ''grown-ups'' manage to continue creating pop music - drifting to alternative or rock, if they aren't already Andrew Ridgeley (Who's that, you ask? My point, exactly!).
Robbie Williams, who played the character of the ''bad boy'' in the elaborate stage play that was Take That (and was subsequently fired for being too much of a ''bad boy'') decided to take it personal! His first solo attempt was a cover version of George Michael's Freedom '90! Think about it, he covered a song by a guy who also was part of a cheesy boy band in the 80s! (NOW do you remember who Andy Ridgeley was?) Incidentally, Freedom '90 was not a bad choice - ''I was every little hungry schoolgirl's pride and joy/ And I guess it was enough for me...''
Coming back to Take That, they definitely had a long run as far as boy bands go. Almost 6 years and about four albums later, they broke up and went their separate ways (Robbie Williams stuck around to tear his skin off in the Rock DJ video, Gary Barlow and Mark Owen had one album each that I know of and according to what I heard on MTV News, Jason Orange went on to pursue ''a career in interior decorating''). Everything Changes is a collection of almost half of their best songs (the only ones that are on other albums: It Only Takes A Minute, Promises, Sure, Back For Good, Never Forget and How Deep Is Your Love?). They had 9 music videos in total, most of them were from Everything.
My all-time favourite Take That song is a cover of a 70s disco song by Dan Hartman, called Relight My Fire. I LOVE the way this song starts up. Take That got Lulu to sing with them (she sang the main title for James Bond's The Man with The Golden Gun) and it is a really great cover. The video compliments the song, giving one a glimpse of early 90s club culture (hehe, sort of). I remember Mark Owen wearing a T-shirt advertizing ''Junkie's Baddie Powder'' instead of Johnson's Baby Powder. If you listen to only ONE Take That song ever, make it this one.
Pray was the first Take That track that I heard or saw the video for. This is one of my all-time favourites from the 1990s. The Cheese Factor for the video is heightened by the visual of one of the band members holding a silvered piece of glass to their chest and you catch the sun reflecting off ''their heart''...
Other personal favourites from this album include the title track (featuring Robbie on vocals), Babe, the video for which was kind of funny, Love Ain't Here Anymore (the lyrics are only slightly cliched, and the chord progression is somehow great), Another Crack in My Heart (mainly because of the piano riff), Why Can't I Wake Up With You?.
Wasting My Time is just a tune to listen to before the most awesome Relight... starts up, and If This Is Love isn't too bad (once you're in the pop-listening mood!)
An interesting fact about Take That that you may or may not know concerns the cover for their penultimate album, ''Nobody Else'' - it features Take That member dolls surrounded by Christmas presents and decorations. This cover is apparently inspired by the cover to a certain Beatles album (I am not a Beatlemaniac, so I don't remember the name), which depicted the Fab Four in similar fashion with one exception - there was a lot of bloody meat on the floor in the picture - this was supposed to symbolize the way that their American Record Company had butchered their promotion and popularity in the USA in many ways including inaction.
The same is true for Take That (though, of course, I concede, on a smaller scale because even though I'm not a Beatlemaniac, and even though the Beatles were also a cheesy pop band growing up, they had a lot more talent) - they had absolutely no success in the United States. In fact, most Americans have never heard of Take That, and the only Take That single to enter the US charts wasn't even from Everything Changes!!! Damn those short-sighted Americans with their 98 Degrees and their 'NSync!
I conclude this review with a line from Relight... that tells you what pop is all about - nostalgia. ''Turn back the time to the days when... our love was new... do you remembah?''
- Thank You! We appreciate your effort.
